[plt-scheme] Student parsing problem
On Jun 3, Stephen Bloch wrote:
>
> On Jun 3, 2009, at 11:40 AM, Eli Barzilay wrote:
>
> > On Jun 3, Felix Klock's PLT scheme proxy wrote:
> >> [...]
> >
> > I find it hard to justify either comments or whitespace after quotes
> > etc even in "hacker mode" -- the only reason would be to conveniently
> > comment out an expression, which is redundant when there's `#;' now.
>
> Eli, you're quite right for comments or whitespace immediately after
> an INTENTIONAL quote. But it's really easy to type a quote or a
> backquote accidentally and not notice it because it's only a few
> pixels, and possibly many lines away from the code you're paying
> attention to. As I understand it, the student problems that
> triggered this thread were exactly such typoes.
To clarify: I *agree* with this. I meant that I don't think that much
harm will done if no whitespace or comments are allowed after
quotations even in the usual language.
Even at the technical level, at least on a conventional keyboard it's
easy to hit a single quote instead of a semicolon and end up with:
'; foo
;; bar
and the resulting typo is difficult to see.
(But these points don't apply to `#;'.)
--
((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay:
http://www.barzilay.org/ Maze is Life!